


Sights Unseen: The Torment of Tantalus

by aadarshinah



Series: Sights Unseen [6]
Category: Stargate - All Series, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Asgard, Episode: s01e10 The Torment of Tantalus, Gen, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 07:44:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1461379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aadarshinah/pseuds/aadarshinah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing Moment's from SG1's "The Torment of Tantalus."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sights Unseen: The Torment of Tantalus

**Author's Note:**

> As part of my [Great SyFy Rewatch](http://aadarshinah.livejournal.com/293285.html), I'm writing a drabble for each (or most) episode of SG1 as I watch them. Lots of background, lots of head!canons, with eventual aim toward Sam/Jack. It's also sort of distant, distant background to my [Ancient!John](http://archiveofourown.org/series/11336) series, but reading one is not requisite for the other - although this will serve as an expansion of what occurs in ["Fratris Filii"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/306512).
> 
> Yes, yes, I know it's awful how long I took to write this one, seeing as how I watched it LAST Saturday, but RL has been busy and this one just didn't want to come. I would have skipped it if I wasn't trying to make a point at the end.

**11 November, 1997 – Stargate Command, Earth, Milky Way**

"C'mon Daniel. It's Tuesday. That mean's movies and beer at the Colonel's place, however much you'd like to stay in your lab and practise your Old Norse."

"Proto-Norse, actually," Daniel says without looking up from his desk, across which a frankly prodigious collection of papers has gathered. Reference books, open to random pages, are stacked precariously atop of brightly-coloured binders across its surface; spiral-bound notebooks missing half their pages hang at awkward angles over the edge of the table; uncapped highlighters are drying at random intervals. A whiteboard marker is tucked behind his left ear.

"The difference being?"

"The difference being," he says, actually bothering to look towards the doorway that she's still darkening, "that Proto-Norse evolved into Old Norse sometime in the mid-eighth century and is in turn descended from Ur-Germanic, which I think is the language some of the runes in Heliopolis were written in."

Sam takes a couple of steps into the room, pausing before the echo of her footsteps can cause the entire structure of leather-bound books and photocopies to come crashing down. "So why aren't you brushing up on your Ur-Germanic?"

Daniel pouts, the kind of pout she's not seen on another human being since her brother had been three years old. "Because," he says with utmost petulance, "no one's been able to properly reconstruct Ur-Germanic. And now because some folks a couple hundred of years ago failed to properly preserve their history, I may never be able to translate anything we found in Heliopolis."

"You think the Asgard wrote those runes, right?"

"Right."

"Well," she says, trying for cheerfulness, "we know they're still around at least. Maybe you'll be able to ask them one day."

"Unless," Daniel counters darkly, taking off his glasses and polishing them on the hem of his shirt, "they're not still around, and that hologram Jack and Teal'c found on Cimmeria is all that left of them and we destroyed it too."

"I'm sure that's not true."

"Unless it is."

"Daniel-"

"What if humanity is just this, this unprepared, ill-mannered, precocious toddler, stumbling from world to world, destroying things we have no idea the importance of, and making all sorts of unforgivable mistakes, and generally doing more harm than good?"

Sam sighs. "I don't think that's true. But even if it is, we have to learn somehow, which we're not going to do if we just stay on Earth and play it safe."

"I guess. It's just so frustrating. All this knowledge and we're just… ignoring it, or outright destroying it. I could be looking at the meaning of life right now and never know it, all because our ancestors lost the one language I could read it in."

Sam expects more protest, but instead Daniel stagers to his feet, switching off a couple of lamps along the way. She slings an arm around his shoulder. "You'll figure it out eventually. We'll find a way. And if it is the meaning of life, well, it's been around for a while. It can wait for us to figure it out on our own."

To her surprise, Daniel smiles. "You know, Jack said something like that just the other day."

"Really?" she says with even greater surprise, which, to her shame, she can't keep hidden.

"Yeah. You know, if you gave him a chance, I think you'd really like him."

"He's my commanding officer, Daniel."

"And what? That means he's not allowed to have friends?"

"No, just that he can't be mine. Or I can't be his. One of the two."

"I think you're both being ridiculous." But then, before she has to explain the fraternisation regs to him again, Daniel changes the subject, asking, "So what are we watching tonight? Any idea?" and that bullet is dodged for another day.

Despite herself, Sam is pleased. She knows Daniel's questions will only get worse as time wears on, but at least she doesn't have to deal with them tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to ParadoxR for the poste facto beta.


End file.
